Second Vermont Republic Uses a Glorified Fortune Teller for Economic Prognostication

Many sesechers from Vermont and elsewhere frequently tout the baas of the
Second Vermont Republic, Thomas Naylor, as an economist, as though "he's an economist, so what he says must be true."

I've been examining some of the "economic" underpinnings of the proposed Second Vermont Republic, an idea that garnered support from fewer than 8/10ths of 1 percent of Vermont's voters when they got a look at Naylor's hand-picked candidate for governor, Connecticut native Dennis Steele.

One I found was Paul Craig Roberts, who, like SVR advisory board member Thomas J. DiLorenzo, has had his writings published in anti-Semetic, Holocaust denying publications. In addition to the anti-Semetic, hate sites VDARE.com, the Institute for Historical Review and American Free Press, Roberts is a contributor at website called Trends Research Institute.

The Trends Research Institute and its journal are cited repeatedly at Naylor's SVR website, as well as at Rob Williams's "Vermont Commons", and is published by Gerald Celente, a longtime Fox News contributor and a Glenn Beck favorite.

You see, Celente specializes in a particularly dark, doom and gloom, fear mongering form of prognostication so favored by seceshers, tea baggers, Beckdroids and others who know the so-called "truth." But, like most fortune telling scams, there's always evidence to undermine the con, if only the mark will look for it. Of course, if the mark did trouble himself to look for it, he'd find ample evidence that would tell him that whole thing is a fraud. Here's just one source.

Consider the Peak Oil theory. Energy shortages and conversions to new sources have been with us for ages. So have hardships, wars, political dominance, you name it. But, as the seceshers would have it, the effect will apocalyptic. Therein lies the scam. Were it true, there'd be no need to seceed; the result will almost certainly be the same as secession - micro communities on their own, Mad Max style. And secession won't prevent the result of their dire post Peak Oil land, so why the hurry?

These types have been there to cry that the sky-is-falling for a very long time. Like all fortune teller swindles, this one relies on the tried and true, "you got a problem, I got the cure," except with an Internet age edge. You buy Celente's publication from the Trends Institute, and he guarantees to scare the shit out of you. He even has an office full of globes so that you get that he has a worldview. Naylor and his crowd then promise to lead the way to salvation, that is, secession.

Fortunately, Vermonters have better sense and are unlikely to become the grifter Naylor's "marks."

Naylor's SVR has always been a con whose aim is political power. And in the end, he only convinced 10 of his Charlotte neighbors to go along with the secesher gubernatorial candidate in 2010.

That's 0.48% of the 2041 votes cast in Charlotte. In Waitsfield, home to "Vermont Commons" publisher and über propagandist for the SVR and Free Vermont crowd, Steele got 9 votes. Perhaps worst of all, Steele got only 5 votes in his present hometown of Kirby, VT.

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